Starter VPC
A clean network foundation: VPC with one public and one private subnet, Internet Gateway, route tables, S3 gateway endpoint, and flow logs. No NAT — nothing here has an hourly charge.
What you can build with this
A correct, empty network to build on. The public subnet routes to an Internet Gateway; the private subnet has NO internet route at all — deliberately, which is why the whole stack costs ~nothing to leave running. VPC Flow Logs record every connection (accepted and rejected) to CloudWatch Logs with 90-day retention, and a free S3 gateway endpoint lets private resources reach S3 without any internet path. Nothing runs in it yet: you drop servers or databases into the subnets on the canvas later and redeploy the same stack.
Deployment timing
After you run the deploy command, resources come online at different times. Check the validation steps in order.
| Resource | Ready in |
|---|---|
| VPC, subnets, route tables, Internet Gateway | 1–2 min |
| Stack CREATE_COMPLETE | 2–3 min |
| Flow log records in CloudWatch Logs | 5–15 min behind live traffic (once something runs here) |
CloudFormation parameters
These are the values you will fill in when deploying the exported template. Changing these does not break the template — that is the point.
| Parameter | What to provide | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Environment | Environment tag applied to resources (does not rename them) | dev |